Ding!
[System current balance: 54,501,020 SC]
[Congratulations, host, you’ve made yourself a rich man.]
I let out a long breath as the cold evening wind roared against my back. Somehow, the entire world seemed brighter and livelier.
No, it wasn’t because cops were swarming the street and barking orders.
Nor was it because someone had set a house near the casino on fire.
And definitely not because some huge woman was practically beating her boyfriend senseless while screaming "bitch!" and "ass!" at him.
It was just that the world felt so much better.
I strutted away from Casino Street, shoulders squared and chin held high, triumph radiating from me like heat.
An amount of money I couldn’t have dreamed of in this lifetime was sitting in my bank account, and I’d only had the System for a single day.
So what would happen after a year? Two years?
Would I become so rich that no man alive would dare speak down to me? So powerful that I could seal the heavens themselves?
It was a foolish thought. A childish one. One I hadn’t allowed myself to entertain in years.
Maybe that’s exactly why I let it roam free, allowing my mind to be happy for once.
After putting some distance between myself and the casino, I hailed an SUV cab, the kind with a curtain separating the driver from the passenger compartment, and told the driver to take me to Kego Street.
Since I hadn’t been home in two nights, I knew my father would be itching to trigger the sigil and beat my ass.
But I didn’t want that.
I wanted to walk into that house on my own two feet and give him ten times the payback for everything he’d done to me.
Every beating. Every ounce of pain. Every sleepless night.
I, Michael Kaiser, was going to pay it all back in full.
"System, are you done with the scan?"
[Yes, Host.]
[If you want to increase your HP, MP, and Stamina to E-Rank, while raising your ATK, DEF, Crit Rate, Crit Damage, Healing Bonus, and Energy Recharge to F-Rank, it will cost approximately fifteen million System Coins.]
’Fifteen million? Just for that?’
[Yes. Increasing your overall rank to Tier 1 F-Rank would cost an additional fifteen million.]
[As for your Trait and Class Mastery, I wouldn’t advise investing in either yet. Class Mastery alone has a base cost of thirty million, and even that investment has its limits.]
[Since you can use every class, you would need to invest separately in each one. As for your mastery of the Pay-To-Win System, your main Trait, that cannot be purchased at all.]
I mulled over the system’s words, sinking back against the cab’s soft seat. ’I thought you said I could buy anything before...’ I asked dryly, not really expecting an answer. ’So how else am I supposed to raise class mastery and trait mastery?’
[Normally, Awakeners train with their main skill over and over, sometimes pushing themselves to death’s door before their class mastery upgrades enough to unlock secret classes or earn a class-change ticket.]
’Let me guess. That won’t work for me.’
[Exactly.]
[You’re an outlier in this world. Simply using the System increases your Trait Mastery. Class Mastery is different. You’d need to acquire skills from other classes and use them frequently. Even then, the gains would be minimal.]
I frowned, the hand propping up my chin dropping to my side. ’Small gains? So I’m going to be stuck with unmastered classes forever?’
The system’s voice wavered, like it was shaking its head.
[You should know that when you buy a skill, its understanding is downloaded directly into your mind. With AI Mode, you can even watch the skill being performed in real time, like watching a master demonstrate it firsthand.]
[That understanding, the kind that would normally take an Awakener years to develop into Class Mastery, is handed to you from the start. Only a sliver of the knowledge remains unmastered.]
I sighed, tipping my head back to stare at the cab’s ceiling. "So it’s hopeless?"
[Not exactly. If, instead of buying skills, you purchased manuals from other worlds, ones containing traits from different classes, then found a way to study them manually, imprint those traits onto a class, and forge new skills from them, you could increase your Class Mastery at a ridiculous pace.]
[However...]
"Yes?"
[Well, to pull that off, you’d need to be insanely talented. Not just normally talented, either. You’d need to be a genius, bordering on the unnatural.]
[You’re compatible with me, which already says something, but I don’t think you have what it takes to pull it off. Frankly, I don’t think anyone in this world does.]
[Hahaha... Unless the universe completely misjudged you and I came all this way for nothing.]
[Wouldn’t that be one hell of a shocker? Though, considering your bloodline, I doubt that’s going to happen.]
I sat with the System’s words for a long moment. Painful as they were to hear, they were the truth.
I was far from insanely talented. If I had any gift at all, it was perseverance. That was what had carried me this far, after all.
If I were one of those regressors from Earth’s stories, maybe I could’ve clawed my way there across a dozen lifetimes. But I only had one life, and I had to make the most of it.
’Can you find another way to raise it?’ I asked slowly.
[...]
The System paused for so long that it felt like it was digging through something buried deep within its database.
Finally, it spoke again.
[There are traces of a method in my database. It’ll take some time to track it down, but I’ll find it.]
I gave a small nod and pressed a hand over my eyes.
For Awakeners, Class Mastery mattered almost as much as Rank or Trait, if not more. Without a mastered class, you’d eventually slam into a bottleneck when leveling up.
Plenty of geniuses had reportedly hit that wall, unable to gain additional stat points or level up at all simply because their class remained unmastered.
On top of that, mastering a class allowed a user’s skills to evolve. A simple Fireball, for instance, could eventually transform into something closer to a Hell Grenade.
Even at the same level, a normal skill stood no chance against an evolved one. Worse, unmastered skills had a natural ceiling. Once they reached it, they and their users simply stopped growing.
There were other costs too: missing out on techniques and special abilities tied to a specific class, or never getting the shot at a unique class of your own.
Class mastery was, without question, the single most important weapon in an Awakener’s arsenal.
Just as I opened my mouth to press the system for more, the car rolled to a stop.
Through the window, the familiar rot of the neighborhood I’d lived in for over ten years came into view. Peeling paint, cracked pavement, and a flickering streetlamp greeted me like ghosts from a life I’d rather forget.
My jaw clenched on instinct, a tremor running through my chest. ’System, pull up the best skills, blessings, techniques, and abilities you can find for under twenty million.’
I pushed the door open and stepped out of the car, one foot at a time.
The stale, musky stench of the street hit me immediately.
’And System... start the upgrades.’
[Affirmative, Host.]
It was finally time to collect the debt those years of suffering had left behind.